


cursed love, blind faith

by Lumeha



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Family Curse : The Fic, M/M, family angst with a form of happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2020-12-09 08:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumeha/pseuds/Lumeha
Summary: “A Fraldarius will always love a Blaiddyd more than they love you”, whisper countless wives and husbands. “It’s their curse, and our curse, to never be loved back.”---"Little is more precious, to a Blaiddyd, than a Fraldarius", say spouses with wispy laughs. "You may have a Blaiddyd's love, but never forget that a Fraldarius has their ear."





	1. A Fraldarius will always love a Blaiddyd

**Author's Note:**

> This is brought to you by the Dimilix Domination discord server inspiring me through convos and all

Fraldarius lies on her back, her neck twisted unnaturally, blood pooling out of her throat in waves. Words warp and twist around her tongue, dying with her. Around her, the thunder of cries and heavy steps, the fire of the battlefield, and she feels cold, cold, cold. But she smiles, bloody and white, sure that he will live one more day. 

Her life leaves her as the eyes of Blaiddyd dig into her, an oath on his lips, a promise, a curse. He never took the heart she almost offered, once upon a time, a lifetime ago - for his was taken by another. In the end, it is his name on her lips, and her blood for his life.

(Her sons will never hear her voice again, and still, she dies happy)

**xoxox**

“A Fraldarius will always love a Blaiddyd more than they love you”, whisper countless wives and husbands. “It’s their curse, and our curse, to never be loved back.”

**xoxox**

It starts with…

**xoxox**

Kyphon smiles. Brother in arms, they call them, but it feels like a lie. ( _ Because it is _ , Pan laughs, black and yellow and red, and the sadness in his eyes is too much) And Loog smiles, too, large and bright, and unaware. Next to him stands the archbishop, her pale gaze dark despite the joy on her lips.

“You have accomplished much, Loog”, she says, voice low and even. “May your bloodline be a keeper of peace, King of Lions.” 

They have duties. They have a new Kingdom to tend to, to help bloom into a country that thousands and thousands will be proud to be part of. Wrapped in his blue, acclaimed as a King, Loog will be weighted by his work, and Kyphon and Pan will stand near him, ready at his word. 

What is one heart, faced with the future of many ?

(A sacrifice, worth a thousand lives, to stand next to the one he loves)

**xoxox**

Rodrigue buries his love deep in his heart, hides it behind his soft voice and his gentle manners. It is a sweet pain, a poison painted on his lips, that he drinks from his own cup, again and again and again. He doesn’t know when it started : the Academy, their training with knights, earlier, later ? The answer is lost, even to him. But one day, the light fell differently, a halo of light caught in blonde hair, and he knew his heart beat for his king. 

Lambert never knows, never learns, and this is how it is supposed to be : secret and unknownable, impossible. The king is radiant, in love, with a bright smile and a warmth that twists Rodrigue’s lungs and stabs his heart, and yet it is a joy to be there for him. 

“Provide for what he needs, and be what completes him. But never hope for more than he gives, because it is our curse”, his mother had told him, when he was too young to understand the weight of her words. Now, he understands ; the way her hands wrapped around his, the way she looked at her own king, the way her lips twisted behind his back, full of a joy painted with sadness.

And one day, Glenn dies, Lambert dies, and Rodrigue lives, and it burns. He buries them and grieves. Or maybe he doesn’t, burying along their corpses the pieces of his heart they held in their hands, and he ignores the gaping void inside. But he carries on, left behind, a useless shield who lugs around the memories of the late king like a heavy cloak bringing him down. With too sweet smiles, he accepts his son’s hatred, feeling the strands of their bond unravel under his fingers, unable to stop, to explain, to find a way to extend his hand without hurting him more. 

But he can be there for their prince, and it makes grief a little bit easier, the gnawing endless sea a little calmer. No one can see the pain, except maybe his son, with venom on his tongue, and he doesn’t know how to make it better for them both.

(Rodrigue lives, and some days, he hates himself for it)

**xoxox**

Ingrid cries and cries and cries, for Glenn, herself and a dead future. She has been widowed before she was married, and she remembers the bitter words of Glenn’s mother. A warning for a young girl full of hopes. The thorns of the rose, her wispy voice had said, be wary of them, be ready for them. Love him all you want, but he will never be yours fully, no matter how much he loves you back. 

A knight gives their life for their king. It is love, she whispers, and he gave his life for their prince, with his haunted eyes and the screams ripping out of his lungs at night. 

She rips out the veil from her head, the light black lace heavy with tears and grief, and she swears his duty will be hers, but her heart will be hers, hers, and hers only. 

**xoxox**

Felix stands in Garreg Mach graveyard, the bland grave of his father under his feet. Pale flowers bloom on the white stone, small blades of blue sharper than his sword, and he doesn’t have to ask to know who puts them there. 

“Remember what mother used to say ?” he says in the wind. “ _ A Fraldarius will always love a Blaiddyd more than they love you _ .”

It feels awful, standing above the corpse of a man he has both hated and loved. Has he loved Dimitri more than he loved Felix? It is an impossible enigma. Even his father would not be able to answer that one. 

“Thank you for bringing him back, I guess.” 

But Felix could not answer it either, if anyone asks him, tries to dissect the tangle of knots that is between his lungs. Does he love Dimitri more than he ever loved his father ? Anyone who knows him would say “yes”. Sharp and direct, like the blade he uses to talk. But the truth is too complicated, a tapestry weaved by clumsy hands and deft fingers alike. 

Life takes and takes and takes, and he has no answer except the one at the tip of his blade. Except the way his feet and heart will always make him fall behind the large silhouette of the boar.

"I don't plan on being like you." he tells the grave. "I don't know what that idiot is going to say, but I don't plan on staying silent. At least I am not going to die regretting it." 


	2. Little is more precious, to a Blaiddyd, than a Fraldarius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who is _finally out of the WIP Hell that is my google docs_ ?
> 
> Please enjoy this, it was both one of my favourite things to work on and something I had to wrestle against to have it done in a satisfying way, but I am quite happy with it
> 
> And thank you to [Arithra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithra/pseuds/Arithra) for her re-reading and her help for this chapter !

Blaiddyd holds the hand of a corpse, cold seeping into his skin, and it seems unreal. He expects it to unravel, to disappear, for this reality to simply stop. To see the blood and flesh knit itself back and for Fraldarius to breathe again under his hands. But no magic can bring her back. He had found her body, broken to eerie angles, throat torn apart, and a smile frozen on her lips. 

She can’t hear him, no longer, but he promises her that he will honour her sacrifice and carry her in his heart for the years to come.

(His sons will hear of her pride, of her fierce strength, and of her loyalty, but never, ever know of the love that he could not give back.)

**xoxox**

"Little is more precious, to a Blaiddyd, than a Fraldarius", say spouses with wispy laughs. "You may have a Blaiddyd's love, but never forget that a Fraldarius has their soul."

**xoxox**

It starts with… 

**xoxox**

Through the music, the dance, the feast, Loog feels an undercurrent of worry. It is a feeling that keeps him on his toes, searching at the corner of his eyes ; he is still not used to peace. It is an itch to look at his back, to let his fingers brush the sword at his belt. His safety is not what he worries for, and it heightens this trembling anxiety that readies him for a battle that will not come. 

Near him, the queen is sitting, her eyes heavy with a feeling Loog can’t quite understand, despite all he tries. Standing behind her is Kyphon, fair, loyal Kyphon, his traits schooled into a mask of indifference. But he sometimes leans toward the queen, the soft words they exchange drowned in the music. 

It soothes something under his skin, to see them close. The woman who stole his breath with her silver eyes and the man who was bound to him by blood and steel. 

(And yet, he is none the wiser : the queen knows that she has his burning heart, and Kyphon knows he has his undying loyalty, and none of them have what they truly wish for.)

**xoxox**

In the courtyard, Glenn is showing Dimitri, Felix, Sylvain and Ingrid how to hold their swords. His movements are slow and precise, careful of the children around him, under the watchful eyes of Gustave. When Lambert stops to look over the training grounds, Rodrigue, always one step behind the King, tilts his head, a question in his eyes. 

“Do you think Dimitri will have the connection that we share with Felix, or with Glenn ?” Lambert asks with a smile. 

A shadow flickers on Rodrigue’s face, so quick Lambert isn’t sure if he saw it or not, and his friend turns his head, eyes softening at the corners when he looks over his two sons.

“I don’t know.” Rodrigue’s voice is gentle, almost practiced in the way the words fall from his lips. “Glenn loves him like a brother, which is quite different from what we have.” Lambert doesn’t stop him but isn’t sure of what he means by that. “And Felix…” Something echoes and resonates in the trailing end of his words. A sadness, Lambert thinks, deep like the water of a well, always close but never truly seen. “He reminds me of myself at that age. For their future, I hope…”

Dimitri, below, turns to Felix, a large smile on his face. Glenn ruffles his little brother’s hair, his voice sharp, and Felix tries to pout and fight against the smile that blooms on his lips. He can picture Rodrigue and him at the same age, under the watchful gaze of one of the royal knights. 

In this sadness he can hear but cannot define, Lambert wishes he could reach out to his oldest and closest friend. They have been there for each other through thick and thin - from the mischief of their childhood and teenage years to the dark days of holding the country together through the wails and losses of the plague. 

(Lambert never hears Rodrigue’s wish for his youngest son. But he tastes the tragedy, heavy on his tongue, when the memory of a child’s voice rattles in his mind, asking if he will ever be able to marry the prince.)

**xoxox**

There is no sky, only smoke, charred flesh, and the wails of those who still have voices. The air is hot, too hot, and it burns Glen’s throat and lungs, his breath raspy and rough against his flesh. Blood pours and pours and pours and pours, and he does not have the strength to raise his hands at the wound. He does not have the strength to think or to fight. 

He is drowning on land, is burning in blood, and yet the pain and death are the farthest things from his mind. 

Heavy tears on the reddened cheeks of his brother, the solemn eyes of his father.

A shock of blonde hair. The twist of a heart under the pain of grief.

(Is it Ingrid ? Is it Dimitri ? Or is he weeping for all of them, too young and too old to face so much ?)

**xoxox**

Dimitri looks down on his hands. The blood on them has disappeared, washed away in reddened suds of soap and pink tinted water, washed away by time, and yet he can still feel it dry on his fingers and his palms, seep into the crevices of his gauntlets. The blood of his family, his knights, of rebels and bandits and soldiers, of men and women. The blood of Glenn and the blood of Rodrigue are opening and closing statements on his life - droplets in the rivers he fed the earth, but too full of meaning.

_ Little is more precious, to a Blaiddyd, than a Fraldarius _ , his step mother told him in a whisper, warm and low against his ear, _ so hold him near your heart _ . He almost wants to laugh at the cruel irony. He has lost and lost and lost, and it all comes down to the tragedy his step-mother has been entangled with, the moment where the cracks appeared all along their lives, like roots breaking the stones they were buried over, revealing the crawling and rotten dirt hidden beneath.

Felix steps to stand to his side, and he favours the left, and yet Dimitri feels himself tense up. His gaze rests on the broken shards of the cathedral’s window, the hole torn into the ancient stones, and the prince-king-boar remembers these eyes looking at him from behind a pillar, voice singing with anger.

“I want to do better." 

Dimitri blinks and blinks and blinks. “Better ?” His voice feels foreign to himself, as if heard through layers and layers of gauze and bandages. He expects to hear the polite lilt of his adolescence and faces the rocky edges of too many years of fighting against the world. 

“Better. For you, and for me.”

Felix turns his head toward him, focuses his attention on him despite avoiding his lone eye. It is a touch of familiarity in the unraveled threads of their relation. A gift, maybe. 

(A gift, surely, of bruised comfort and sore tenderness it makes bloom in his chest.)

“Do you remember that confession I made, as a kid ?”

He remembers, yes. He remembers the fierce light in a child’s face, the one he sometimes catches when Felix is faced with a challenge he refuses to back down from. The one burning in his eyes, right now. The one he always associated with his step-mother’s word and with the bitter iron taste of uncertainty.

“You wanted to…” He hesitates. It has been years since those words have been said between them. They only are finding again their footing, through grief and war and blood, and Dimitri doesn’t want to taint those memories. 

“I spent too much time lying to myself, to you and to everyone. Too much time hating you when I don't.”

“Felix…”

“You don't have to say anything.” 

Silence is sometimes better than fumbling words. But Dimitri hesitates, thinks of the blood on his fingers, of the cold metal of the gauntlets he never removes. But isn't Felix wearing thick leather to protect himself from the cold bite of metal? 

Slowly, with movements he has to make himself remember from the deep darkness of his memories, he reaches out and takes Felix's hand. 

"... I want…" 

He shudders. 

"... This will be…" 

"Hard."

Dimitri nods. Felix fingers tightens against his. 

"I want. To make it work." 

It is… Open. Vulnerable and genuine. Dimitri smiles - and Felix answers in kind, small and embarrassed. 

The hope is light against his lips, tightly held between the warmth of their hands. 


End file.
